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A student’s admission is based on his or her grade point average and performance on a clinical aptitude test.
But in 2012, the university introduced the Mirror on Society policy, prioritizing students from underrepresented communities within the healthcare workforce.
These include Maori and Pasifika students; students from rural or low socioeconomic backgrounds; and refugees.
In 2020, more than half of the second-year medical placements in Otago were for students of these origins.
They still have to meet academic requirements, passing each of their assignments on the first try with more than 70 percent grades, but due to the highly competitive nature of the course, students who score better but don’t meet those categories may end up losing locations.
Last month RNZ revealed a discussion paper being considered by the University of Otago that allegedly raised the possibility of introducing a limit on the number of placements reserved for Maori and Pasifika students.
(Otago says there are no proposed changes to the policy; it was a discussion paper, no proposals have been made, and the university has reaffirmed its commitment to the Mirror on Society policy.)
This led to criticism from some quarters that an initiative that was successfully pushing underrepresented demographics in the medical profession was in danger of being neutralized.
Professor Peter Crampton, former dean of the Otago medical school and now professor of public health at Kōhatu, the Center for Hauora Māori, says the policy is an attempt to correct more than a century of entrenched attitudes about the medical system.
“Students who come from communities that may be rural, low-socioeconomic, Maori, or Pacific, are more likely to end up serving those communities, wherever they are in the system.
“People have to be sure that that part of the system will be influenced and populated by people who look and think like them and who have similar backgrounds.
“Because that obligation has not been so conspicuously fulfilled forever, throughout the lifetime of the New Zealand health system, we developed the Mirror on Society policy to quite explicitly and deliberately address health work “.
Donovan also talks to Dr. Elana Curtis, associate professor of public health at the University of Auckland about an underrepresentative workforce and unconscious biases.
RNZ
